MIT’s China problem
Mike Pompeo delivered a speech at Georgia Tech on Wednesday about the Chinese Communist party’s undue influence on American higher education.…
Why Boris Johnson can’t sign the current Brexit deal
The negotiations are still underway in Brussels. But both the UK and the EU are now talking far more openly…
Conservatism in Australia isn’t AWOL, but instead flourishing quietly
In a recent Flat White item, Where is Australia’s conservative intellectual movement?, Jonathan Cole and Simon Kennedy argued that Australia, in contrast to both…
Hunter becomes the hunted
Are the chickens coming home for Hunter Biden? It certainly seems so, though experts differ on the critical question of…
Does the EU understand what sovereignty really means?
The UK never tried to have our constitution written in one big session. We made it up by responding to…
Dear Elizabeth Farrelly, from what I know about both Jesus and the Diocese of Sydney, they aren’t really all that into control
Dear Dr Farrelly, Thank you for your opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald from last Saturday. You mention important issues…
If lefties want to talk capitalism in the 21st century, can they at least get an honest, fresh critique?
First there was the book, now there is the “documentary” film version of French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the…
Johnson and von der Leyen agree a new Brexit deadline
Ahead of Boris Johnson’s dinner with Ursula von der Leyen, the hope in government had been that the discussion would…
Cambridge academics have just won an important battle for free speech
Academics at Cambridge won a cheering victory for free speech today when they voted by an overwhelming majority to reject…
We are shackling ourselves to the safe and mediocre with lazy talk of ‘the pub test’
“Not a good look.” “Bad optics.” “Doesn’t pass the pub test.” Such are the statements by which many controversial or complex ideas…
Biden’s speech impediment
Does Joe Biden write his own speeches? Surely not. Yet his campaign says Biden was his own speechwriter for the address he made…
Don’t panic about the Covid vaccine allergy risk
In the coming weeks, you are inevitably going to see a slew of stories in the media about side effects…
Wealth taxes are not the answer to our financial woes
Today the Wealth Tax Commission, an initiative involving the LSE, has recommended a ‘one-off’ 5 per cent levy on the…
Why is China keeping quiet about its vaccine programme?
While Britain is the first country in the world to approve a vaccine, it is not the first to start…
We should not accept Brexit in name only
Given the seemingly highly technical nature of the current negotiations, members of the public who have normal lives to lead…
The EU’s remaining Brexit stumbling block
Here is the fundamental stumbling block to a free trade deal, one that the Prime Minister has just confirmed in…
Crime before coal?
The chair of one of the nation’s largest restaurant chains, Mary Sum of the Plate Group, has announced that its…
Dear feminists: bore off with your language policing
We all know that the media has been hijacked by the left. As 2020 draws to a close, I’ll happily…
#WeGoBrokeWithDan
Guess which state or territory has the worst credit rating? Before answering, let me explain what a credit rating is.…
Why the war on ‘the gig economy’ when in reality ‘permanency’ is insecurity?
The demand by Australian unions to turn, it seems, all jobs into ‘permanent’ has been mugged in the blink of…
What the Lancet study tells us about the Oxford vaccine
While the Pfizer vaccine became the first to be used in a public vaccination programme on Tuesday, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine…
Sun Tzu and the Art of Trade
Around 2,500 years ago, Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu wrote his masterpiece, the Art of War. This treatise is…
A morning in a diner with Michigan’s COVID rebels
Portage, Michigan The short notice taped to the door is addressed ‘to all government officials’. It gives them a warning:…
Republican resurrection
When Donald Trump took his famous escalator ride, the Republican party was too attached to abstract principles at the expense of the material interests of…
China strife? Blame Canberra’s acronym alphabet soup
A World War I slogan in the Kaiser’s Germany proclaimed ‘When the bayonet goes in, it should hit steel, not…
